Hot and Dry Saturday, Florence may bring cloudy relief Sunday

Hurricane Florence made landfall just before 7 AM CDT Friday near Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina as a Category One hurricane. That’s important for North Alabama and Southern Tennessee for two reasons: (1) we are on the ‘dry’ side of the storm leaving us with only a few isolated pop-up showers and storms and (2) it’s not likely to have a ‘major’ impact on us here.

Temperatures soared into the 90s Friday afternoon, and the heat index has been as high as 100ºF to 105ºF.

Saturday and Sunday look mostly dry, but clouds drifting westward from ‘Florence’ may shade us just enough to keep temperatures lower Sunday afternoon.

Weekend weather: The weekend looks hot and dry for most of North Alabama and Southern Tennessee; however, some of the clouds from Florence’s west side will drift over Northeast Alabama and eastern Tennessee Sunday into Monday. That added shade may drop temperatures considerably from the low-90s in the sunshine in The Shoals to the low-80s in the cloud-shaded areas mainly east of Huntsville.

Rainfall potential is meager: less than 1/2” east of Huntsville Sunday into Monday and nothing of significance to the west.

Staying hot for a while: The Fall countdown is on, but the weather does not have any plans of changing on September 22nd. It’s eight days until the Autumnal Equinox.

September is not always cool and comfortable. In fact, it’s been a lot worse than this! September 13-18, 1927 was the second-hottest streak of September days in Huntsville’s recorded history. The average high was 102ºF: 17ºF above average.

We’ll see highs about 10ºF to 12ºF above average next week (mid-90s) with very little chance of appreciable rainfall.

A cool front gets close to the Tennessee Valley late next week raising the chance of showers and storms for Friday and Saturday. Will it get ‘cool’ behind it? As of now, we see a decent temperature drop in the next 10-14 days. A ‘big’ drop from the mid-90s would just be enough to get us close to the seasonal norms for mid/late September.